Monday, February 23, 2015

I remain cold and wet

Saturday I did some insulating in the problem room from last weekend at the rental house.

Sunday, I went to the basement to get some socks out of the drier and found several inches of water. And my socks. The temperature had climbed up to 45°F after the low of 1°F and heavy snowfall of the day before. The snow was melting pretty fast, and the water table was climbing accordingly. When that happens, the water likes to come up through my basement floor.

The lowest part of the basement just happens to be at the bottom of the stairs. So if anything goes wrong, the first thing to happen when you go to respond is that you'll step in the water. As the water rises it floods towards the front of the house. Once the water hits about 2" it breaks over the high point in the floor and finally starts across the room to the sump pump.

I swept for awhile, and got a bunch of water down the sump pump. Then I remembered the shop vac. I vacuumed and vacuumed and dumped and dumped, and made great progress. But eventually I found that I was no longer making progress. I hadn't considered that the basement was still flooding. Until the water table went back down I was just wasting my time. So I went to have breakfast - at around 6:30 at night - to see if the water level came back up. Sure enough, an hour later the water was high enough to be draining nicely into the sump pump, again. Off for 13 seconds, on for a second or two, repeat.

I kinda prefer it when the pipe is broken. Sure, my flooding is a bit more relaxed, but with a broken pipe there's something I can fix.

Between the pipe and the flooding, I've learned something. After working in the cold and wet in somebody else's house I want eggs, potatoes, pancakes, coffee, gravy, and like that. After working in the cold and wet in my house I just want whiskey. Since it was Sunday, I settled for some rather crappy mead.